Walking Like A One Man Army
by deanandhisimpala
Summary: Tag to "Metamorphosis". It's a knife wound, right to the heart. And it's going to scar. Dean knows it.
1. Dean

**So here I am again with another short-ish one. :P**

**I was really moved by Dean and Sam's arguments during _Metamorphosis_ and I really wanted to get inside Dean's head and see how he was feeling after that episode was over. 'Cause I mean... there was _so much _left unsaid. And poor Dean, I really feel so bad for him, he's got so much stuff weighing him down! The poor boy, honestly. **

**Anyways, here it is... hope everybody likes :)**

**Disclaimer: Darn it, they STILL don't belong to me.**

**Lyrics and title are from the John Mayer song "Say What You Need to Say"**

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Dean tilted his head a little, so he could see Sam where he lay in the next bed. Sam, one long sasquatch arm hanging over the side of the bed onto the floor, was asleep, his face turned away from Dean.

Dean tried not to feel irritated that Sam was asleep and he wasn't. It wasn't Sam's fault. Well actually it was. A little bit, anyway. Okay, quite a bit. Cause God knew, he was tired. But he just couldn't seem to sleep. Not after the past couple of days. With that stupid Rugaru and getting his head smashed on a table… but those things even didn't really have that much to do with it. His restlessness mostly had to do with Sam, and their yelling matches that had happened a couple of days ago. And the quiet – but no less disturbing – talk in the car after the hunt.

He guessed the real reason why he wasn't sleeping was pretty obvious, even though he tried to deny it.

He was afraid Sam was going to leave again. The crippling fear he'd felt when… when Castiel had brought him back from the past and waiting for him was… not Sam. An empty bed. Not only had it been empty, it was completely untouched. Now Sam was kind of a neat-freak. But even he couldn't straighten up a bed to the point of it not looking layed in at all – not those motel beds. You could always tell when they'd been used, at least by the pillows. And that one hadn't. Which meant Sam hadn't even layed in it once. Which meant that he'd been planning to leave all along.

Dean's chest tightened at the thought. He wasn't going to even pretend for a second that it didn't hurt – Sam leaving every night, to do whatever the hell he was doing. Exorcising demons, or something. With his mind. Yeah, it hurt _a lot_. Not just the lies. God knows those hurt more than he'd like to admit. But - Dean felt almost selfish thinking it – he'd just got out of Hell a couple of weeks ago. And already, Sam was leaving? Not staying to make sure Dean was okay? That nothing was going to get him and drag him back to Hell?

Dean shook his head a little, throwing away the thoughts. Just because he would've done that – kept an all night vigil – if Sam had just been brought back from Hell, didn't mean Sam would do the same. As much as they were brothers, and they had so much in common, there were certain things about them that would never, ever be the same. Of course.

Dean would never have left Sam here by himself, with not even a note in case he woke up. It really hurt that Sam had left. Again.

Sure, he'd been planning to come back. But the point was… he'd left. No note. And lies everywhere.

"_So… you been using your freaky ESP stuff?" _

"_No." _

"_Sure about that? Now that you've got immunity, whatever the hell that is… just wondering what other weirdo crack you got going on." _

"_Nothing, Dean you didn't want me to go down that road, so I didn't go down that road. I mean it was practically you're dying wish."_

Just showed how much his dying wish meant to Sam. All lies, everything. Without warning, tears blurred his eyes and he shot out of bed as fast as he could. _I am SO not going to sit here and cry. What if Sam wakes up? _

He grabbed his jacket and crept out of the room. It was icy outside, and Dean's breath hung in the air in front of him as he walked slowly down the row of doors, his shoulders hunched, chin down.

_Walkin' like a one man army_

_Fightin' with the shadows in your head_

He just needed to leave for a second, get away from the bad feelings.

_Ha. Get away from the bad feelings_. As if that was even possible. The bad feelings followed him wherever he went.

"_What about Ruby? Where's she?"_

"_Dead, for now."_

That was a lie too. Ruby wasn't dead, she wasn't gone. She was right there, all along. She'd been _with_ Sam when Dean had first gone back to him, just hours after he'd been pulled from Hell. She'd been there, pushing Sam to do weird stuff and trying to make him into some… some freak that could exorcise demons with his mind. Who could even do that? It scared him more than he liked to admit.

And then when he found out – when he caught them in the _act_ – Ruby acted like – like _he_, like _Dean_ was the one who was doing something wrong. _He _was the one who wasn't supposed to be there. While it was Ruby who wasn't supposed to be there. It was like the more she came around, the more she pushed her way in, the further she was pushing him and his brother apart.

_Take out of your wasted honour_

_Every little past frustration_

The feeling of being unwanted crept back into his head again, the tears came back. The parking lot was just a blur of black and yellow from the lights in front of him.

_What's the point of staying? Sam won't want me around for any of this "exorcising demons with his mind" crap. That's for him and Ruby. And, to be honest, would I _want_ to be around for any of it? It scares the crap out of me. And I freaking _hate_ Ruby. And… he lied to me about so much stuff, what if he lied to me about other stuff too? Like did he really try that hard to get me out of Hell? Or was he just playing around with Ruby the whole time?_

_STOP IT_. He stopped that thought immediately. He knew Sam hadn't lied to him about that. He _knew_. Because he'd seen the truth in Sam's eyes, when he'd explained how he'd tried _everything_ to get him out of Hell… he'd not lied about that.

And he knew without even the slightest doubt, he would never leave Sam. He couldn't. He had to save Sam.

And anyway, where would he be without Sam? He couldn't live without Sam. Wouldn't.

But Sam had been lying. Back there, in the car. About not using his powers anymore. He knew it. He'd known his brother for too long… too much time spent together… to not know when his brother was lying. That decision was made way too quickly… no way he'd change his mind that fast… not after five months of using those stupid powers. So there it was again… another lie.

He stopped, having walked all the way back to their own motel room again, and paused, just standing still, breathing in the cold night air even as it burned his lungs and chest.

"Dean?"

Dean jumped about a foot in the air and whirled around, wide eyes taking in Sam, who was standing with the door open, leaning against the frame.

"Holy crap, Sam! Warn a guy, can't you?" Dean blinked frantically, hoping the tears were gone and his eyes weren't red.

Sam just looked at him. "What are you doing?"

"Getting some air, what does it look like?"

Dean's sarcasm was back full force, hiding the heart-breaking pain deep inside him.

_Have no fear for givin' in_

_Have no fear for givin' over_

Sam wasn't moved. "It's freezing out here, man. Get back in here before you catch something."

"I survived Hell and you're worried about me_ catching something_?" Dean couldn't resist saying, but he followed Sam inside anyway.

Sam closed the door behind him and then turned to look at Dean.

"What were you doing, Dean?"

"I already told you, sasquatch," Dean said, not looking at Sam and instead walking to his bed and sitting down.

"Getting some air at three o' clock in the morning?" Sam looked at him disbelievingly, then his voice softened. "Dean, I'm sorry, man."

Dean glanced at him. "Wow, random. For what?" He curled his hands into fists, pulling them inside his jacket sleeves to warm them up.

"Everything. I should have told you…" Sam waved a hand vaguely in the air, like he couldn't figure out what else to say.

"You already said that Sam," Dean said quietly. Suddenly he was tired, bone-tired, and all he wanted was to crawl into bed and go to sleep.

"I know I did, I just… I just want you to know I really am sorry, Dean. I'm not just saying it." Sam was giving him the old puppy-eyes look, the _please-forgive-me _look.

Dean hated that look. Because it always made him want to forgive Sam, no matter how angry he was. But this time… even though the look made him want to forgive Sam, he couldn't. Not quite. Not this time.

Some hurts just ran too deep… some wounds took longer to heal. And this one… this one was a knife-wound, right to the heart. It was going to take a while.

Suddenly Sam was beside him, sitting down on the bed next to him.

"Dude!" Dean protested, instantly starting to move away, but Sam grabbed his arm.

"Dean, can you just… wait? Just stop for a second. I know you're mad, okay? I'd be mad too. I mean, I hated it when you kept that secret from me, what Dad said. I was really pissed at you too. But you remember how that was? How you kept that secret from me so that it wouldn't hurt me? Well it's the same here, Dean, I kept it from you cause I didn't want to scare you, I didn't want to hurt you. Not because I didn't want you around. Dean… I always want you around. Okay? I just want you to know that."

He squeezed Dean's shoulder lightly, and stood up, heading back to his own bed and laying back down, this time laying on his back.

To Dean's horror he felt tears flood his eyes again and blinked rapidly, quickly looking away so Sam couldn't see his face. But this time, they were tears of… relief, maybe? Because Dean knew, he knew better than he knew anything else in the world, that no matter what happened, no matter how many fights they got into or how many things Sam kept from him, his brother loved him.

So maybe, just maybe… even though this wound was going to take a long time to heal – and it was sure to scar - maybe he could forgive Sam a little.

_Even if your hands are shaking_

_And your faith is broken_

_Even as the eyes are closing_

_Do it with a heart wide open_

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**Thanks for reading :)**

**Please let me know what you thought on the way out. I do love reviews :)**

**Catch you on the flipside,**

**Deanandhisimpala**


	2. Sam

**So I decided to write a second chapter for this story, this time from Sam's point of view. I am a raging Dean-girl through and through, and I really do think I write a better Dean than Sam, but I still wanted to explore it from both brother's sides. I hope it turned out okay.**

**Thanks so much to everybody who reviewed last chapter, I hope you all enjoy this one too. :)**

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His brother wanted to hunt him. Well, he didn't really _want _to. But he'd as good as said it. He'd said "If I didn't know you, I'd wanna hunt you."

But _did_ Dean really know him anymore? Sam hated to think it, but he felt so alone these days. Yes, Dean had come back from Hell, and Sam couldn't be happier about that. He had his brother back.

But Dean didn't understand his psychic stuff, his powers, his abilities – and he never would. To Dean, they were something to be feared, something to be put aside and never used – forgotten about.

To himself, they were his salvation.

_Yeah, I have demon blood in me._

_Yeah, I'm supposed to be evil._

_But I'm not._

_I can exorcise demons, send them back to Hell, and save people's lives._

Dean didn't understand that Sam needed to _do_ something. He couldn't just sit around, knowing about the demon blood inside him, and do nothing. Just forget it was there. Pretend it wasn't.

Because it was. It was there and he could feel it, like a burning sensation pumping through his veins. He wondered how he'd never felt it before, before he knew about the demon blood. Because now it was impossible to ignore. He felt it every second of every day, and sometimes he could feel it when he was asleep too. Sometimes it would wake him up in the middle of the night, and his body would feel like it was on fire, a fire within.

It wasn't like his old dreams about Jessica. When he'd woken up from those he'd been terrified, sweating and panting.

But when he woke up these days, he woke up perfectly calm. His heart wasn't racing, he wasn't sweating, nothing. It just felt like there was a fire burning inside him, pumping slowly and steadily throughout his entire body.

He had to admit, it scared him a little. Not so much anymore, since Ruby had come back. But before, after Dean had died, he'd been terrified when he woke up like that. There was no one in the room, no one to tell him it was okay, no one to explain what was happening to him. And he couldn't do anything about it.

But now… now he could do something about it. Now when he raised his hand, and he closed his eyes, and he let the fire in his body flow out through his fingers, now it did something. Now it saved people's lives.

He felt like he could control it now, it wasn't just pumping around inside his body uselessly.

Now when it woke him up in the middle of the night, he could calm it down, will it to stop burning and let him sleep.

_Soon. Soon I'll let you out again, soon we'll save more lives._

Ruby was his saviour. She'd found him, when he'd been beaten and broken. She'd taken care of him for a few days, helped him get his strength back, and then she'd told him. She'd told him what she'd meant before, about how he could have saved Dean from going to Hell.

"_If you'd found Lillith, but you'd been ready, you could have dragged that demon right from the body. She never would've had a chance to _look_ at Dean."_

It had taken a while for her to explain to him what she meant, make him understand what he could do. He'd not believed her at first. He'd just wanted her out of the motel, out of his life – his pointless, empty life without Dean. Just wanted to be alone to mourn his brother. He'd have rathered be dead than live without Dean. And he'd made her leave. He'd thought she was gone.

But when he'd gone through everything, tried _everything_ to get his brother back, and still there was no warm, breathing, bright-eyed, _alive_ Dean beside him, she'd come back. Come to him where he was slumped against that gravestone, too broken to cry, too bone-tired to stand, and she'd helped him up. She'd taken him back to his motel room, and she'd looked after him for a few days, because at that point he hadn't really cared what happened to himself, he'd just wanted Dean back.

When he was finally a little bit alive again, she'd told him again. Told him that he didn't have to live like this.

"_You can save people, Sam. You can save people who have made deals, like Dean. You can save people who've been possessed. Sam, you can do so much… Don't let Dean's death have been for nothing. He died to save you, so honour him and save as many people as you can."_

At that point he'd had nowhere else to turn, nothing else to try. Dean was gone. And as much as it hurt like hell to realize it, there was nothing he could do to bring him back.

So he'd turned to Ruby. He'd let her show him how to use his powers, how to let the burning sensation of the demon blood out, turn it into a force, a force that could pull demons right out of the bodies they were in.

At first it had been terrible. The first time he'd tried it, the demon had come halfway out of the man it was possessing, and Sam had collapsed.

He'd woken up hours later. Ruby was still there, she'd tied the man to a chair, and was waiting for Sam to wake up. He'd exorcised that demon the usual way, with an exorcism ritual, and Ruby had left the room. Sam's head hadn't stopped pounding for days after that.

But soon, it got easier. The first time he exorcised the demon with his powers and found out the girl was still alive, it had felt like he'd been born again. Dean's death _hadn't_ been in vain. Sam was doing good in the world now, even more than he'd ever done before.

And when Dean had returned, it had been like God had answered his prayers. Because even though he'd known Dean was gone, he'd still prayed every single night for him, and still asked that maybe… in some way… that Dean could be brought back to him. And there he was.

Having his brother back was like coming home. Dean, bright-eyed, strong, snarky, _Dean_ was by his side again, where he belonged. Yes, he was scarred, both literally and figuratively. But he was still _Dean._ And Sam couldn't have been happier to have him back. But he'd also known that Dean couldn't find out about him using his powers… not for a while, anyway. He knew just what Dean's reaction would be. Fear, and doubt, and anger.

And he'd been right.

The look of rage and hurt in Dean's eyes when he'd caught Sam last night exorcising the demon… Sam had never seen anything like it. His jaw still ached from the unleashing of Dean's anger and pain. But… at least his brother knew now. It wasn't a secret anymore.

But Dean's words had hurt him, too.

"_If I didn't know you? I'd wanna hunt you."_

Did Dean really feel like that? Was he _that_ much of a freak? He knew the answer was yes. But the thing was, now it didn't bother him so much, now that he could _do_ something to counter it. Now he didn't feel like he was just waiting for the evil to take over, now he felt like he was battling the evil. Like every single time he exorcised one of those demons and saved someone's life, he was pushing it back a little further.

Still, it hurt to hear that. It really did. Out of his own brother's mouth. Even though he'd expected it. Dean would never understand, he would never agree with Sam's views of his powers… no matter how much Sam wished he would. There was nothing he wanted more than to have Dean at his side while he exorcised those demons, proud of what he was doing and proud that he _could _do it. But it wouldn't ever happen.

It felt like there was a new barrier up between them now, a bigger one than had ever been there before. Bigger than the one when they'd had that fight in Indiana. Bigger than the one when Dad had died and Dean wouldn't open up to him. This was gargantuan. Sam could almost _feel_ it, like he could reach out and touch it, and it would feel like stone. He wondered if things would ever be the same between them.

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That night when Sam woke up, he immediately sensed that Dean was gone, and for one paralysing moment, he thought Dean had really left. Left him to fight demons with Ruby, left him alone again after only a few weeks of his treasured company.

He salt bolt upright in bed, and looked over at Dean's bed, already knowing that it would be empty. He leapt out of bed, ready to call Dean and _beg _him to come back if he had to – and then he noticed. Dean's bags were still tossed at the foot of his bed, his clothes still strewn messily on the chair. Only his jacket was missing.

Sam relaxed. Dean was just going to get some air. He was right outside.

Still, to be sure, Sam padded to the door and opened it a little bit. He almost jumped, not expecting to see his brother right outside, but relieved that he was.

"Dean?"

His brother jumped about a foot in the air and whipped around. His green eyes were huge, staring at Sam like he was some kind of monster. Maybe he was.

"Holy crap, Sam! Warn a guy, can't you?"

Dean was blinking rapidly, a sure sign that he'd been near tears. Sam felt guilty for scaring his brother, in more ways than one.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

"Getting some air, what does it look like?"

Dean's emotions were back under control, he was facing Sam now with complete calm. Sam didn't care, his brother was shivering.

"It's freezing out here, man. Get back in here before you catch something."

"I survived Hell and you're worried about me _catching something_?" Dean's remark was off-hand, but it cut into Sam like a knife. Yes, he was worried about Dean catching something. He was always worried about Dean these days. Dean had to live without him for a couple of days. He'd had to live without Dean for _four months_. He would always worry about Dean. Still, Dean followed him inside without complaint.

"What were you doing?" Sam asked. He figured Dean had just been getting some air, but still… at three o' clock in the morning?

"I already told you, Sasquatch." Dean crossed to his own bed and sat down, never knowing how the nickname warmed Sam's heart.

"Getting some air at three o' clock in the morning?" Sam asked, crossing his arms and staring Dean down. Dean looked back at him, suddenly looking very small and very young, curled at the edge of the bed, shivering. Sam couldn't help himself. Even though he still felt the pain of Dean's earlier words, still felt a little disappointed that Dean would never stand by his side while he used his powers, he could never see Dean look so broken and not do something to help.

"Dean, I'm sorry, man."

Dean's eyes flew up, already guarded.

"Wow, random. For what?"

"Everything. I should have told you…" Sam knew he was repeating himself, but he wanted Dean to understand so badly.

"You already said that, Sam." Dean looked older now, like all the cares in the world were heaped on his shoulders. They probably were.

"I know I did, I just… I just want you to know that I really am sorry, Dean. I'm not just saying it." He watched Dean hopefully, wishing he could see some sort of forgiveness in his brother's eyes. Dean looked right back at him, his eyes dark and guarded, and Sam crossed to his sit beside him on the bed.

"Dude!" Dean made to move, but Sam grabbed his arm quickly to stop him escaping. He needed Dean to hear this, and he needed his full attention.

"Dean, can you just… wait? Just stop for a second. I know you're mad, okay? I'd be mad too. I mean, I hated it when you kept that secret from me, what Dad said. I was really pissed at you too. But you remember how that was? How you kept that secret from me so that it wouldn't hurt me? Well it's the same here, Dean, I kept it from you cause I didn't want to scare you, I didn't want to hurt you. Not because I didn't want you around. Dean… I always want you around. Okay? I just want you to know that."

He didn't wait to see Dean's reaction. All he'd wanted was for Dean to hear that, to understand why he'd kept the secret, why he hadn't included Dean in all his knowledge.

He lay back down on his bed, laying on his back but not watching Dean, who was sitting perfectly still. He wasn't going to say any more tonight. He'd apologized enough, explained enough. Now all he could do was wait, wait for Dean to forgive, wait for Dean to remember, remember how things used to be. Remember that no matter what, no matter how many secrets he kept or how many times he went behind Dean's back… Sam loved him. He loved him more than anything else on this whole damn planet. And he knew that Dean loved him too. And until they figured this whole thing out and forgave each other and finally trusted each other again, that knowledge would have to be enough.

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**Well, what did you think? **

**Please let me know on the way out and review :)**

**Thanks so much for reading.**

**Deanandhisimpala**


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